Kyoiku Mama - Brief History of Japanese Education and Related Stress

Brief History of Japanese Education and Related Stress

Post War Japan in the 1950s made it a “national mission” to accelerate its education program. Children of this era had to distinguish themselves from peers at an early age if they hoped to get into a top university. Entrance exams for these children began in kindergarten.

By the mid-1970s, pressure to achieve in children created the need for specialty schools. Seventy-percent of students continued their long school day at Juku or “Cram Schools” after regular school hours ended. In the 1980s, a series of suicides linked to school pressures began. Elementary and Middle school students took their lives after failing entrance exams.

During the 1990s, the economic collapse in Japan after its global economic dominance in the previous decade led to a loss of motivation by students. The once highly touted academic ratings of Japan in math and science fell behind those of American levels. The stress began to lead to classroom disruption.

In 2001, the National Education Research Institute found that thirty-three percent of teachers and principals polled said that they had witnessed a complete breakdown of class “over a continuous period of time” due to defiant children “engaging in arbitrary activity”. In 2002, the Japanese Education Ministry - pressured by the need to reform, Japan eliminated thirty percent of its core curriculum. This freed up time for these students to pursue learning in groups according to the students’ chosen path. The use of the term "mukatsuku", meaning 'irritating and troublesome', has been rising in popular use among students as a description of the feelings they experience of being fed up with teachers, parents, and life.